The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connectors that have terminal position assurance clips.
Some electrical connectors include conductive contacts, such as pin contacts, that are retained in the connectors using retention features, such as latches. To prevent unintended movement of the retention features which may allow the contacts to be pulled or pushed out of the connectors, some electrical connectors include terminal position assurance (TPA) devices. The TPA devices are configured to block movement of the retention features that would allow the retention features to disengage the contacts. Some TPA devices are inserted over distal ends of the contacts and have narrow openings through which the contacts extend. The contacts are guided through the narrow openings by guidance features, such as ramps, bumps, and guide posts, in the TPA device and/or in a contact retention portion of the connector.
There is a current trend of increasing signal density in connectors by increasing the amount of contacts per a given area of the connector. To increase the signal density, many connectors employ smaller contacts and reduce the size of the components of the connectors in proportion to the contacts. Thus, to decrease the size of the electrical connectors that have TPA device described above, the retention features and the guidance features that retain and guide the contacts, respectively, are scaled down. Many of the retention and guidance features are relatively complex to design tooling for and to manufacture already, and minimizing the size of these features adds to the complexity as well as causes additional issues. For example, at least some of the retention features and guidance features may be molded using metal molds. Decreasing the size of the features requires finer metal walls of the molds that define the features. In order to meet the size requirements, some of the metal walls may be so fine that the walls are prone to bending or breaking when the mold is injected with hot filler material, which ruins or at least damages the resulting product. In another example, it is recognized that the retention features and the guidance features must have some resiliency in order to absorb impact forces from the contacts, such as when the contacts are being loaded into the connector or when the contacts are being pushed or pulled by a mating connector. By decreasing the size of the connectors to increase signal density, the retention features and the guidance features may be reduced to a size such that the features lack the required strength to retain and/or guide the contacts. For example, if the guide posts are small and thin enough, the guide posts may bend upon impact from a contact and not provide the desired guidance for the contact. Thus, by reducing the size of the electrical connectors, known retention and guidance features, such as ramps, bumps, and guide posts, may become exceedingly difficult, complex, and/or expensive to produce and may also fail to provide the desired levels of retention and guidance for the contacts.
A need remains for an electrical connector having a TPA device that simplifies the retention and guidance features in order to provide for reliable retention and guidance in smaller-sized, higher signal density connectors.